1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to electronic hand held devices (hereinafter referred to as “hand held devices”) and electronic commerce (“E-commerce”). More particularly, the present invention is also related to hand held devices, such as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), wireless telephone, pager, or other mobile computing and storage device adapted for use in E-commerce. The present invention is also related to wireless and wireline computer networks. The present invention is also related to the fields of electronic cash, credit, and/or associated product management for retail establishments, organizations, and customers. The present invention is also related generally to merchandising systems and systems for generating and redeeming negotiable economic credits (e.g., electronic product discount coupons, cash and/or enterprise credits or awards).
2. Description of the Related Art
The recent shift in the consumer electronics industry from an emphasis on analog technology to a preference for digital technology is largely based on the fact that the former generally limits the user to a role of a passive recipient of information, while the latter is interactive and allows the user to control what, when, and how he or she receives and manipulates certain information.
This shift in focus has resulted in the development and increasingly widespread use of, for example, a hand held digital device generically referred to as a “personal digital assistant” (PDA). Such a PDA can be, for example, a “smart” phone, two-way pager, and so forth. These hand held devices are becoming increasingly popular for storing and maintaining information. Hand held devices, such as PDAs, may be connected to a desktop personal computer, networks or other PDAs via infrared, direct wire, or wireless communication links.
Unlike personal computers, which are general-purpose devices geared toward refining and processing information, PDAs are designed to capture, store and display information originating from various sources. Additionally, while a certain level of skill is required to use a personal computer effectively, hand held devices, such as PDAs, are designed with the novice and non-computer user in mind.
A typical PDA includes a microprocessor, a memory unit, a display, associated encoder circuitry, and selector buttons. It may optionally contain a clock and infrared emitter and receiver. A graphical user interface permits a user to store, retrieve and manipulate data via an interactive display. A PDA also typically includes a calendar, datebook, and one or more directories. The calendar shows a month of dates organized as rows and columns in the usual form. The datebook shows one day at a time and contains alphanumeric text entered in free format (typically, with a time of day and an event and/or name). Each directory contains entries consisting of a name field and a free form alphanumeric text field that can contain company names, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, etc.
Entries may be organized alphabetically according to the name field and can be scanned or searched for by specifying a specific sequence of characters in the name field. A menu displayed via the graphical user interface permits a user to choose particular functions and directories. Most PDAs come equipped with a stylus, which is a plastic-tipped pen that a user utilizes to write in a “graffiti area” of the display and tap particular graphically displayed icons. Each icon is indicative of a particular activity or function.
PDAs are increasingly being utilized to access information from remote computer networks, such as the “World Wide Web” and the “Internet,” both terms well known in the computer networking arts. PDA users can, for example, download e-mail from the Internet to the PDA. Web sites also exist that permit PDA users to access and download software that may be run on the PDA. For example, some web sites offer information to PDAs in the form of compressed news articles, stock quotes, and other data obtained from a wide variety of other electronic webbased sources.
Based on the foregoing, it can be appreciated that a large number of users of hand held devices, such as PDAs, pagers and mobile telephony are increasingly relying on such devices to maintain and transmit a variety of personal and business information.
Discount coupons have long been distributed by manufacturers to merchandise their products and by retail stores or establishments to attract consumers to their particular stores. Both coupon types are typically distributed to attract customers to engage in commercial transactions. Such coupons are effective if utilized by a sufficiently high percentage of customers. Utilizing this gauge, free-standing inserts are not very effective. Their redemption rate is presently approximately 2.8 percent and dropping.
Typically, coupons are physically collected at stores and credit is provided to the customer purchasing the corresponding product. The coupons are generally bundled and forwarded to a clearing house and then to a redemption center for sorting and counting. Reports are eventually forwarded to the manufacturers issuing the coupons in order to eventually generate a credit to the stores redeeming the coupons. It may unfortunately take several months before a store is reimbursed for coupons under present coupon redemption/processing methods.
Another problem with coupons is a significant misredemption rate of between 20 and 30 percent as a result of misidentification and outright fraud. The misredemption problem is exacerbated by the enormous amount of time, usually a number of months, that it takes to reimburse the retail stores for the discount given the customer.
Attempts have been made to address such problems. Such attempts, however, have resulted in additional problems, while not fully addressing the problems described above. For example, some companies have implemented a product specific micro-marketing system tied to a product point of selection and proprietary hardware in the form of an alerting platform attached to a grocery cart. A consumer within a retail establishment presses a button on the grocery cart alerting platform to select an electronic coupon when a coupon is graphically displayed at the exact product location within the retail establishment. The customer and the cart must be located at the point of selection to access the coupon. Such a system is proprietary in nature and requires a customer to retrieve a coupon only from the point of product selection within the store. Thus, because of the proprietary nature of the system, the coupons, the alerting platform and other proprietary hardware may not be utilized at other retail establishments. Furthermore, the enterprise associated with the retail establishment is burdened by the maintenance, replacement, and repair of the proprietary hardware attached to the retail establishment's shopping carts due to use, abuse, the weather and so forth.
Other systems known in the art utilize smart cards and smart card readers/writers at a point of product selection for obtaining coupon data. Furthermore, smart cards are primarily memory devices and do not allow user to manage or manipulate data contained in the smart card without a microprocessor enabled user interface adapted to read and write on the smart card. Also, a more limited card may currently be swiped at a point of sale for the purpose of obtaining discount on items tied to the enterprise/proprietary system. Again, user management or utility of credits are severally limited in the prior art.
Accordingly, alternatives are needed to traditional mass marketing and credit redeeming techniques, and proprietary, point of selection type systems. A need exists for non-proprietary based systems that are flexible, efficient and consumer friendly. Further a need exists for couponing devices that are not owned by the enterprise or retail establishment, but owned by the customers themselves and which can be utilized at other retail establishments and enterprises. Such a device and associated systems and methods, should be ubiquitous in nature to avoid the problems inherently associated with prior proprietary-based systems.
It has become apparent to the present inventors that the ability to acquire, use and/or electronically store negotiable economic credits (e.g., frequent flier miles, e-cash, buyer awards and other electronic commerce-related incentives) on or through hand held devices would free users of the time consuming tasks of clipping, organizing and redeeming traditional paper coupons or credits (e.g., filling out paper-based requests for the redemption of frequent flier miles), and problems that may be associated with proprietary micro-marketing systems. It has also become apparent to the present inventors that for merchandisers and manufacturers, such hand held devices could be utilized to effectively market, compile and negotiate coupon and/or credit exchanges much more efficiently than the traditional paper coupon/credit processing methods or proprietary-based micro-marketing systems and methods.
It is believed that aspects of the invention presently described herein solve the traditional problems associated with paper credit redemption and the growing use of negotiable economic credits, and the problems associated with proprietary-based marketing systems, while addressing an area of user control that has not yet been considered, anticipated, or utilized by negotiable economic credit promoters, merchandisers and/or manufacturers, and the increasing number of individuals who rely on hand held devices, such as PDAs to maintain and store personal and business information.